The sales have not been stellar and Sony is trying a price reduction to get you interested in its PS3 — available at Circuit City from July 15th to the 21st. It even comes with 5 free Blu-ray movies, and all for only $499.

FYI: about the 1.82 firmware update for Sony’s black box, hitting PS3s stateside now. The update (which is already available in Japan) will step up the AVC from Main Profile to High Profile, thus allowing playback of HD content via H.264/MPEG-4 files. Read On Grasshopper

Meet the "Executive" from Heiron & Smith: a pool table (8×4 Italian slate) and a side-mounted LCD TV, stereo with flat-panel speakers, a PlayStation 2, storage for books, games, and sundry items.

All this for only $12,000 — but they could have at least put in a PS3!

source:Techdigest

Hackers have pierced Sony’s PS3 anti-piracy defenses by cracking 1.10 and 1.11 firmwares enabling the console to boot illegal game copies.

Granted, they were not able to play, but Sony is taking this very seriously.

"Unfortunately, hackers will try to exploit any hardware system software," SCEA spokesperson Dave Karraker told GamesIndustry.biz.
"The best we can do as a company is to make our security that much stronger and aggressively pursue legal action against anyone caught trying to use an exploit in an illegal manner."

The neverending battle continues…

source: Gamesindustry

The chief of Square Enix believes the next-generation games consoles are too complex for the new onset of gamers.

"There is a new breed of gamers in the market – we have to make games for all kinds of people,” said Mr Wada, in an interview with the FT. “In the old days, we could just focus on the PlayStation or the GameBoy, but the environment has changed completely.”

The developers of the infamous Final Fantasy series will instead be focusing on handheld games, such as Final Fantasy Tactics and Dragon Quest IX. The Nintendo DS will be their biggest priority, believing there are many features that can be exploited as supposed to the big–game consoles.